Thank you for responding to my question about the Cylon Raider and the Cygnus Probe.

I know that at least one of those Cygnus Probe kits escaped the warehouse.

About 20 years ago, I was speaking to an HPR flyer over the phone while I was working at AeroTech. I don't know how the conversation turned to this subject but we started talking about Estes kits. I mentioned how it would be nice to have one of the Cygnus Probe kits in my collection. He told me he had one. I was skeptical and told him so. He told me that he had visited Penrose and the Estes facility at one point and had managed to get one of these kits.

I still didn't believe him and our conversation moved on to other topics.

I was sent one to review/test around ten years ago. I took it up to one of the Los Angeles NAR Section launches and tried/demo'd it.

The voice countdown feature was it's what made it 'special'.

It worked fine but didn't seem to generate much interest. The most asked question was, "Who provided the voice?"

Can you explain/describe the history of the item?

Thank you.

Bob Sanford

Bob - I didn't know we had sent any of those out for review. I guess I better go check my desk in the morning to see how many of my personal items have been sent out without my knowledge. That controller was too expensive to produce compared with the standard E-Beam. The supplier just couldn't get the cost down and the sound didn't really add any safety or value so it was scrapped. The cost would have driven up the reatil for the starter outfits which is not a good idea. I don't know who recorded the voice - sorry, The whole project was handled by the marketing department who didn't consult with anyone in R&D at all. I saw it on the shop bench one day and asked what the heck it was. That was my total involement.

Thank you for responding to my question about the Cylon Raider and the Cygnus Probe.

I know that at least one of those Cygnus Probe kits escaped the warehouse.

About 20 years ago, I was speaking to an HPR flyer over the phone while I was working at AeroTech. I don't know how the conversation turned to this subject but we started talking about Estes kits. I mentioned how it would be nice to have one of the Cygnus Probe kits in my collection. He told me he had one. I was skeptical and told him so. He told me that he had visited Penrose and the Estes facility at one point and had managed to get one of these kits.

I still didn't believe him and our conversation moved on to other topics.

It would appear I owe him an apology.

I wonder if I have a current phone number for him...

Bob

This is interesting that at least one of the kits got out. It should not have happened. We had a contract with Disney that they were all to be destroyed.

I can think of a few Estes products in the 1995-2000 time frame that were announced or appeared in catalogs or fliers, but then never became available. I know that not every announced product makes it to market (for a variety of reasons), but it was sometimes hard to get retail customers to understand that!

I can think of a few Estes products in the 1995-2000 time frame that were announced or appeared in catalogs or fliers, but then never became available. I know that not every announced product makes it to market (for a variety of reasons), but it was sometimes hard to get retail customers to understand that!

Alan - There have been several products we announced over the years that we had every intention of releasing. There are different reasons for each that caused them to be cancelled. I have tried to fill in the reasons here for some such as the Cygnus and Cylon, but sometimes the explinations are simply not enough for some of the modelers. I don't know what else I can do but try to tell just why some of the models didn't make it.

The Star Booster for example was a scale model of the project that Buzz Aldrin had become spokesman for. I met Buzz when he came to the plant to talk about the project. The full size Star Booster project fell apart in only a few monhs as we were tooling up the model. Licensing kept us from taking any further so it was dropped.

So again, there can be a ny number of reasons why a project ends before reching market.